Today is August 22nd - a holiday and an anniversary you know what. It's time to talk about freedom, FOSS and free internet projects. I present to your attention the translation of the description of the new crowdfunding service Snowdrift.coop , which is scheduled to be launched by the end of 2020. I recently found out about the project and have already signed up for donations (you can too ).
In short, I would describe the project as Patreon + Kickstarter. Snowdrift.coop is designed to fund non-competitive public goods, that is, for open source projects (at the first stage), as well as various charitable and public projects, including independent journalism, art, research (the next stage). By the way, this year the former deputy head of the Wikimedia Foundation, the same Eric Möller , began to help the service .
An open Internet built on a participatory basis inspires and connects active citizens around the world. Through online collaboration we have created amazing projects such as Wikipedia and the GNU / Linux operating system. Since these digital products are non-competitive public goods, everyone can access, use and distribute them freely.
Unfortunately, we face great obstacles. Artificial constraints hinder innovation and creativity. Pervasive advertising fills our cultural space and distracts our attention. Large-scale surveillance of people threatens our civil liberties. Organized monopoly forces establish their control through legal monopolies (copyright and patent laws), technical control (DRM), stealth (for example, the distribution of closed source software) and "fenced gardens" (undemocratic platforms that "lock up" and capture the creative value generated by users of these platforms).
But if we reject proprietary restrictions and advertising, how will people even be paid to create something new?
First of all, people enjoy participating in meaningful projects, regardless of money . A surprising number of projects are being developed today by people who work in their spare time and freely distribute the results around the world. We call these works by different terms: "Free / Libre Software", "Open Source", "Free Culture", "Open Knowledge" ... From now on we will use an inclusive combination of Free / Libre / Open or FLO.
Of course, work done only by unpaid volunteers often does not match the quality of well-funded, targeted businesses.If we could provide sustainable living for FLO design teams, we could have high-quality resources without anti-features like annoying ads, surveillance, or artificial restrictions.
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People continue to use and maintain proprietary resources because they find such products or appear to be attractive. Social pressures reinforce this cycle. As long as friends and colleagues use and recommend proprietary resources, most of us join them.
Individual choice by itself does not solve systemic problems. This makes little difference for one individual. None of us need anti-functions and restrictions; but until FLO projects compete in quality and marketing, implementation will be limited. To be successful, FLO projects now need more support. But giving our limited resources to a proprietary business leaves less for FLO projects.
Under these conditions, people who hope to make a living doing creative work continue to impose proprietary restrictions on the result of their work. People who want the best resources continue to use and support these proprietary projects. This cycle increases our collective dependence on captive resources and damages the good of the whole society.
While it is possible, being a vegetarian in a meat-eating community is socially inconvenient and difficult. Likewise, for what we might call “FLOitarians,” only a tiny minority of us will reject proprietary things on principle. Few of us have ever taken the time to fully explore the complex ethical and medical issues of meat consumption or the privacy and freedom issues associated with proprietary foods. Most people take the path of least resistance.
Choosing between proprietary and FLO
Which would you choose?
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Many people choose the third option: to bypass the proprietary restrictions in order to gain access without payment (block ads, ignore copyright laws and hack DRM). But even if it eliminates direct financing of proprietary products, it still strengthens the overall dominance of the proprietary market.
We need a new social contract: if projects decide to be FLO, the community will continue to fund them; and similarly, if the community is funding a project, then it should be FLO.
Most teams working on projects do not want proprietary control to be an end in itself, they just want to have a stable income. If we come together to collaborate, we can have all the best resources available today and more - all FLOs, no ads, privacy intrusions or any other anti-feature.
Introducing Snowdrift.coop
Our matching and fundraising system allows anyone to support FLO projects with minimal risk and maximum benefit.
Crowd-matching combines mutual guarantees and stable support from regular donors
Unlike traditional fundraising, where fundraising is done on a one-to-one basis, we use the “many people donate” promise to donate, which we call crowd matching . Thus, there is a network effect, as a result of which we all reinforce each other. And, unlike one-time fundraising campaigns that help launch projects, the Snowdrift.coop project offers monthly payments to ensure ongoing support for ongoing work.
The patronage of the donor community allows for better promotion of public interests
Before the era of modern market capitalism, creative people received support from wealthy patrons. With Snowdrift.coop, the global community becomes such a sponsor. Instead of companies offering us options, and we just choose them as "consumers", we will support a different system. We will actively work on projects that best serve the interests of society.
Our approach minimizes costs and risks for both projects and donors, making the system realistic and practical.Each new promise to donate is an invitation to other people to participate in the project. If we finance only some projects or provide only partial funding, it will still be advisable. On the other hand, if we succeed on a larger scale, we will encourage people to shift paradigms towards a more democratic economy and a freer world.
How it works
- Register a user account
- Add payment details
- Declare your support for your favorite projects
The basic promise of the donor says:
*** Every month I will donate a tenth of a cent for every other donor who also starts donating. ***
- There is no risk to participants; if few donate, it won't cost you anything.
- When you join, your pledge to donate means existing donors will donate more to match you!
- You are in control of your budget. If the donated amount rises to a level that exceeds your budget, it will be automatically reduced. To keep your commitment to donate, you can increase your donation budget or refuse to support other projects.
You can also contribute creatively to the ecosystem. There are many ways to help . In addition, as a patron of the Snowdrift.coop project itself, you can become a member of the cooperative and have more influence in the management of the entire system.
Organization of projects according to the highest standards
We require all projects to use Free / Libre / Open licenses, be transparent and adhere to the principles of fairness (see the Community section for more details ). Since funds come from ongoing monthly payments, projects are accountable to the community. Donors can adjust their contributions based on how they feel about the results of each project.
Why is the name "Snowdrift" used?
Our name comes from a dilemma in game theory called The Snowdrift Dilemma. Imagine a huge snowdrift blocking the road; who will clear it? We all have other things to do. For example, with funding for FLO, no one wants to take on this burden alone. In the FLO dilemma, the obstacles to elimination are proprietary constraints and funding problems, and we can tackle these dilemmas together by making a commitment to cofinancing. Thus our name is: Snowdrift.coop. To learn more about game theory, read our page detailing the snowdrift dilemma .
What about other financing options?
All existing financing mechanisms for FLO projects have different problems (see the Market Research section for more detailed overviews ), but we can work in parallel with them in any case. We simply require projects to disclose all of their funding sources to ensure transparency.
What projects can you participate in?
We may oversee a set of projects participating in our initial testing and launch, but after that we will be happy to participate in all projects that meet our requirements (which include Free / Libre / Open licensing and some other details), including in the field of art, music , journalism, textbooks, research, technology - provided that the main work of the project is to produce public goods that everyone can freely use.
Authors of the original : Iko, wolftune, Aaron Wolf . CC-BY-SA 4.0 .
Translation of the text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license .
Please note, this is a copyleft license. 100 , () . - , , . . - , () Liberapay (0% ) .. !